Political Parties and Civil Society Organisations: Differences and Overlap

Civil society organisations may carry out certain functions that also apply for parties. However, they cannot fulfil the most important function of the parties: participation in general elections, which not only provide to the parties their share of political power, but also ensures their representativeness.

Thus, both political parties and civil society actors are important when linking the state to society. Some of their roles are similar and there is often overlap between the two. However, the main distinction between political parties and CSOs is that parties aim to win elections and seek to control state power while civil society organisations do not. Civil society actors do not contest elections and their rationale is to act on behalf of particular interests and articulate their demands and concerns.

Advocacy civil society organisations can contribute to the shaping of policy. Some CSOs make technical expertise available for policy formulators and exert pressure on governments and political institutions. They encourage citizen participation and promote civic education. They provide leadership training and opportunities for the young and marginalised and act as a vehicle for their participation in politics (Madsen 2012: 6).

Even if interest groups perform some of the functions of parties they can be distinguished from parties by three major features:

1. They do not involve themselves in political competition for parliamentary seats.

2. Their missions, objectives, programmes, activities and areas of interest are usually limited to specific issues or concerns of particular social groups, while parties generally aim for a more general design and the functions of the representation or integration of different social groups.

3. They are more connected with the groups whose interests they represent. For example, business organizations are guided by the interests of its member corporations and their representatives; trade unions represent workers’ interests in the forefront of their actions, which concern mainly the areas of wage-bargaining and working conditions; other organisations focus on social or cultural issues or environmental issues, like welfare associations which focus on the production of social services. (Hofmeister and Grabow 2011: 65)

There is distinction overlap in roles frequently attributed to civil society organisations and political parties. A summary of their functions in the process of democratic consolidation is outlined below:

Political Party and CSO collaboration

Benefits of Collaboration for Political Parties

Partnering with civil society organizations has potential benefits for many political parties. All parties have limited time, people and money. Some common challenges in parties are training new leaders, developing platforms and informed policies and improving communication with constituents. Depending on the particular situation in your country and party, here are some ideas on how working with CSOs can help your party improve its internal democracy, transparency and outreach and ultimately help the party more effectively solve citizen problems.

Improved Internal Democracy

Parties can ask CSOs to help a party improve its platforms, policies and skills, and to become more dynamic, effective, and professional by supplying expertise on policy analysis, platform development and legislative initiatives; organizing policy debates and issue forums with party representatives, elected officials, and candidates in relation to elections, pending legislation, or emerging public priorities; providing polling and surveying services; and providing training to members of a political party to increase the skills of party leaders (negotiations, communications, management).

Improved Transparency

Parties can ask CSOs to help improve party transparency and internal democracy by monitoring internal party elections; providing experts on ethics codes to help develop/improve the party’s code.

Improved Outreach

Parties can ask CSOs to help parties understand citizen concerns and communicate with constituents by including articles in CSO newsletters; by highlighting legislation sponsored by the party; by inviting parties to events; by encouraging members to vote for party candidates; by providing volunteers to help mobilize the vote in elections, to build up party membership during non-election periods, and to help with other party work; by increasing political participation of citizens; by encouraging political participation; by providing voter education services; and by publicly endorsing a political party in order to encourage members of the public to join (Breth 2006: 14).

Benefits of Collaboration for CSOs

While CSOs can form opinions and try to influence policy, normally they cannot implement it themselves. So when there is a party that espouses the same ideas that they do, working together in some way can be very interesting and allow them to more effectively achieve a common goal.

Where there is a common cause, the CSO may see collaboration with a political party as an opportunity to advance its interests. As part of the collaboration, the party might propose legislation, publicly discuss and deepen public understanding about an issue or propose to increase public funding for an issue. In some cases, a party could provide volunteers and members to advocate a common platform or issue campaign, such as pension reform, or improving secondary education.

Of course some CSOs choose not to work with parties at all. Some CSOs prefer to work with many parties to maintain their non-partisanship; others prefer to work with just the one party whose values match theirs. By carefully matching your party interests to the CSOs, your party can convert what many parties perceive as a problem into a positive opportunity to leverage resources to solve citizen prob- lems (Breth 2006: 15).